by Jocelyn Fox
“Use my phone and give them my number to call you,” said Vivian immediately. “I wasn’t supposed to be back for another two days, so they’re not expecting me at the shop.”
“You’re in the running for best friend of the year award,” replied Ross, only half-joking. “You came home to blood on the door and strange men in the house and handled it pretty well.”
“Oh, pretty well? Not amazingly or fantastically?” Vivian grinned.
“I think the fact that Luca and Merrick are easy on the eyes helped their case,” Ross pointed out with a practical air.
Vivian shrugged. “Didn’t hurt. Plus, I always liked to think that some of the stories I’ve read could be true. You know, magic and other worlds and everything.” Her voice trailed off dreamily. Then she glanced at Ross. “I’m more surprised that you seem to be accepting it pretty easily.”
“Nothing easy about it.” Ross shook her head, watching Merrick pace across the back yard, counting his long steps with concentration. “At first, I just let them think I accepted it. It seemed easier at the time. Still does.”
“What, you think they belong in the loony bin?” Vivian asked. They could still see Luca and Duke at the side of the house; apparently the easiest stones were located beneath Ross’s bedroom window. Or maybe they wanted Merrick to use the stones that the bone sorcerer’s lackey had stained with his blood.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” Ross sighed. “It’s enough to handle Noah coming back, you know?”
“I’m surprised you can even function, honestly,” remarked Vivian. She crouched and began arranging the spray paint cans in a row, sorting them by the order of the colors of the rainbow.
Ross started to reply with sarcasm but then reconsidered. “I am too.” She shrugged. “I guess that’s just how I am. Something needs to be done, there’s a problem that needs to be solved, and that’s on the front burner right now.”
“As opposed to having a nervous breakdown because your fiancé is back from the dead. Sensible.” Vivian nodded and stood up to survey her handiwork. “But really, how’s it going to work? He can’t hide out here at the house forever. Doesn’t he have any family that would like to know he’s alive?”
“An older brother and his mom,” replied Ross. She’d been thinking about that too. How exactly was Duke supposed to live when he was supposed to be dead? “He hasn’t talked to his dad in years, and apparently his home situation wasn’t great. He didn’t talk about it much.”
Vivian hummed thoughtfully. “Well, it’s a weird scenario for sure. But better than the alternative.”
“The alternative?” Ross didn’t follow.
“Him being dead,” replied Vivian.
Ross didn’t have an answer for that. She felt oddly numb. At random intervals when she glimpsed Noah, she kept remembering snippets of his memorial service: the polished coffin with the American flag draped over it that really only held a few handfuls of ashes; the somber expressions of the other members of his unit; the murmured condolences whispering about her like moths in the darkness. On that day she’d been frozen in grief, thinking about the last time she’d seen him, the last hug he’d given her on the tarmac before joining the other men in the cargo plane, the last feel of his lips against hers. All of it gone.
She’d done her own research into fires – how hot they burned, how long it took bone to crumble to ash, how long a person could feel pain while they were trapped in a fire. Morbid, but somehow necessary. Somehow it made her feel connected to Noah, trying to understand his last moments. Trying to fathom how it happened, because nobody could explain why it happened. She’d been working as a paramedic at one of the firehouses on the outskirts of the city, and the firefighters had patiently answered her questions. Eventually, they’d suggested she become a firefighter, because she seemed so interested in the topic. The first time they’d said it, it had been almost a joke, but they’d gotten serious when they put her through some preliminary drills and understood that she could pull her own weight…literally and figuratively.
Ross watched Duke lever one of the large, flat paving stones up from the ground with his shovel. Did his survival invalidate the pain she’d felt over the past months? Shouldn’t her joy over his appearance eclipse her anger? She couldn’t make sense of what she was supposed to feel, so it was simpler to…not feel. Gather it all up and squeeze it into the black box in her chest. She had to hand it to her therapist. It was a handy trick once she’d mastered it, although the good doctor had admonished her that it was a tool to cope with things when they became overwhelming, not as a daily ritual.
Merrick strode back over to them. “The larger the rune, the more powerful it is, but I don’t want to overextend myself, especially not for this trap. If it goes awry, I want to have some fight left.”
“Makes sense.” Vivian nodded gravely, as if she discussed the particulars of runetraps during daily business at the coffee shop. “You need a circle for the outer boundary, right?”
“Yes, like on the door,” Merrick affirmed. His dark hair curled at his temples, damp with sweat. Vivian held up a hand and disappeared into the shed for a moment. She reemerged triumphantly with a roll of twine and a garden stake, a cobweb caught on one of her curls. Merrick stepped forward and delicately disentangled the dusty strands from her hair. Ross didn’t miss Vivian’s blush, and she made a mental note to ask Duke if Merrick was spoken for back in his own world.
“We’ll drive the stake in the center of your circle,” Vivian explained, sounding a little breathless, “and measure out the radius on a length of twine. Then we can tie one of the paint cans to it and – voila!” She grinned.
“It’s an idea with merit,” said Merrick, nodding slowly. Vivian happily followed him as he showed her where to place the stake. Ross picked up the mallet that they’d both neglected to take along to drive the stake into the ground, following a step behind them. She handed it to Vivian with a little smile when her friend realized the mistake and turned back toward the shed. Merrick and Vivian worked intently on marking the outer circle for the rune; Merrick paced out the length of twine while Vivian finished driving the stake into the ground, and Vivian demonstrated how to work the can of spray paint.
“It won’t be a perfect circle,” she amended, looking at their setup.
“Perfection doesn’t exist. Flaws are always expected in the runes. They’re built for it,” explained Merrick.
Ross stood by the stake, feeling superfluous. Luca walked toward her with two stones stacked on his shoulder. She raised her eyebrows. For someone who couldn’t stand up on his own the day before, the blond giant was still freakishly strong. She wondered about his capabilities when he was fully rested and healthy. Merrick handed over the marking of the outer circle to Vivian, who took over with enthusiasm. The dark-haired elfin man directed Luca to place the stones at the cardinal points of the compass, checking the sun overhead and a strange little device that he kept in a case on his belt.
“I have a compass in the house if you’d like to verify,” Ross offered.
“This should be sufficient,” said Merrick, carefully wrapping his device and sliding it back into its case. He flashed Ross a quick smile. “But thank you.”
Ross nodded with an answering smile, studying Merrick while he directed the construction of the rune circle. He’d explained that just marking the runes, like he’d drawn with chalk on the doorway, was the most basic level of power, but actually constructing them lent another level of permanence and strength to runes, hence why they’d often be carved into a surface like wood, or engraved in metal. And since they lacked the tools to do either of those, he’d settled on carving the runetrap into the earth. That method would also let him expand the physical size of the rune, he added.
Now, in the middle of the project, Merrick looked livelier than Ross had yet seen him, but she watched him with a critical eye. His gray eyes shone with a feverish brightness, and there was a hesitation to some of his graceful movements, as though
his joints pained him. Luca had said he was sick because of the cutoff between him and his wolf; was Merrick sick because he had no connection with the Fae world, or was it just a consequence of his being in the mortal world? Ross shook her head.
“Listen to you,” she muttered to herself. “You don’t even know whether you believe these guys and you’re thinking about magical connections between men and wolves.” She surveyed the circle that Vivian had triumphantly finished painting in the grass. “And you’re building a runetrap in your back yard.” She sighed and picked up one of the shovels.
They worked through the punishing heat as the sun rose higher in the sky, beating down on them mercilessly. Vivian disappeared into the house and reappeared with her tube of sunblock, explaining its purpose to Merrick and offering to apply it for him, a cheeky glint in her eye. He courteously declined and went back to supervising the construction of the runetrap. He tried to help dig – gallantly offering to give Vivian a break – but turned pale from just holding the shovel, and after a few feeble shovelfuls, Vivian wrested the shovel back from him. He disappeared behind the shed. Ross grabbed Vivian’s arm when she went to follow him.
“Let him keep a little of his dignity,” Ross advised her friend in a low voice. She shook her head at Vivian’s half-formed protest. “He’s not like one of your boys from the city. He doesn’t want to be babied.”
Vivian sniffed. “The boys from the city are boring compared to him.”
Ross rolled her eyes as she dug her shovel into the ground again, maneuvering it around a tough clump of grass roots. “You’ve known him all of a day, V.”
“I’m a very good judge of character,” Vivian replied defensively. She swore effusively as she tried to pry up a tangle of weeds.
“Here.” Luca walked over, sliding his axe from his belt. Vivian stepped back and watched with wide eyes as the ulfdrengr dealt the clump of vexing plants a few decisive blows, his muscles rippling beneath his tight, sweat-soaked t-shirt. He nodded in satisfaction to Vivian.
“Well, you certainly killed those weeds,” she murmured, her eyes traveling over his undeniably attractive musculature.
Luca seemed not to hear, sliding his axe back into the loop on his belt after cleaning its edge of dirt. He returned to his sector of the circle, digging with placid determination.
Ross chuckled. “Weren’t you just singing Merrick’s praises?” she teased Vivian.
“There’s nothing wrong with looking,” Vivian replied. She waggled her eyebrows at Ross.
Ross smiled at her effervescent roommate and then almost unconsciously glanced at Duke. He’d taken off his shirt soon after they started digging, only grinning at Vivian when she offered him sunblock. Now Ross watched him and felt a prickling of desire: his deployment and adventures in another world had done her fiancé’s physique good, whittling off the slight beer belly that he sometimes acquired during slack training periods. He wasn’t as broad-shouldered as Luca or as slender as Merrick, but Ross liked his sinewy build. Most men towered over her, but he was just the right height, only about half a head taller than her; and just as she preferred his wiry body over more muscular men, he liked her compact, lean muscles, distinct from years of lifting heavy weights to build her strength and keep up with the men.
“Ross and No-ah, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g,” sang Vivian softly, grinning as she dumped another shovelful of dirt to the side of the circle.
Ross shook her head but smiled as she refocused on digging. Count on Vivian to dredge up some childhood rhymes to underline the humor in their situation. “Pretty sure you want to ‘sit in a tree’ with a certain elf,” she said slyly in a low voice as they sliced their shovels into the dirt.
“I’m fairly certain he doesn’t like being called an elf,” replied Vivian with elegant disdain.
Ross shrugged. “I’m still waiting to find out that his ears are just really good prosthetics like they use in the movies.”
“I could feel them to make sure they’re real,” Vivian suggested with a giggle.
Wiping the sweat from her face with one forearm, Ross rested her foot on her shovel and inspected her hands for blisters, not that it would deter her from finishing the task. “Let me know how that turns out for you.”
“Is that a dare?” Vivian cocked her head to one side, grinning.
“Sometimes I think you’re still thirteen,” said Ross with a chuckle.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Challenge accepted.” Vivian went back to shoveling, glancing at Merrick every so often with a calculated look in her eye. He didn’t seem to notice, completely absorbed in the construction of his runetrap. Since he couldn’t dig with the shovels, he took a can of spray paint and attempted to sketch a rune on the first of the eight flat paving stones that Luca and Duke had pried up from the landscaping. A gust of wind interrupted his precise gestures, scattering the paint. He stopped, frowned and flipped the paving stone over onto its clean side, but then he looked at the can of spray paint with mistrust.
Ross leaned on her shovel, tucking a sweat-soaked tendril of hair behind her ear. “I have a paint brush and some regular paint, I think.”
Merrick looked at her with relief. “Thank the gods. I was about to use my own blood.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I hope you’re joking.”
“Not in the slightest,” he replied calmly. He accepted the brush and a half-full little can of paint gratefully, waving Ross away when she apologized for not having any paint thinner or brush cleaning supplies.
They finished digging the circle as Merrick finished painting the last flat rock. Ross collected the shovels and Vivian disappeared inside the house. Mayhem bounded through the grass, greeting Ross before sniffing her way around the freshly dug circle. Duke pulled his shirt back on and convinced Luca to sit with him in the short shadow of the shed. Ross found one of Mayhem’s rattier tennis balls in the long grass and idly threw it for the dog, tossing it almost across the large yard.
“You shouldn’t let her overheat,” said Vivian, walking back to them bearing a pitcher and large plastic cups.
“She’ll be fine. She’s been in Afghanistan and Iraq, with a lot more gear on than this.”
“Yeah, well, so have you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get heat stroke,” Vivian replied, holding out a plastic cup to Ross. She poured ice water into it with the skill of a seasoned waitress. Ross had to admit that the sound of the ice cubes filling her cup was quite appealing.
“You are an angel sent from the good Lord above,” said Duke as Vivian poured him water, his Southern twang coming through strongly as it often did when he was laying on the charm. “Second only to my lovely fiancé over there.” He toasted Ross with his cup. She chuckled, drinking her water as Mayhem bounded after the airborne tennis ball.
Luca accepted his water with sincere thanks. He drank a few large swallows and poured a good portion of the rest over his head. Merrick mused aloud about runes to keep water frozen so that they could have ice-cold water with these strange cubes in his world as well. Ross finished her water and glanced up at the sky: the wind was picking up and the air felt heavy.
“What else do we need to dig, Merrick? And will this hold up in a downpour?” She thought of having to dig the whole runetrap over again. Her arms and back protested as she picked up a shovel again.
Merrick hastily finished his glass of water and swept up the spray paint that he’d abandoned for the runes on the stones. He drew a series of straight and curved lines in the circle. Ross tried to visualize the rune in her mind’s-eye, but she couldn’t seem to hold the image in her head. She shrugged slightly. It didn’t matter if she knew what it looked like. All that mattered was that it worked – and even that she wasn’t sold on. But it was better than sitting dejectedly in the house, waiting for another attack.
“Once I seal the lines, the soil will resist erosion,” said Merrick as he stepped outside the circle. “Just these lines left to dig, and I’ll seal it.”
Luca, Du
ke, Vivian and Ross each took one of the lines inside the circle. The wind plucked at Ross’s shirt and tossed Vivian’s curls as they worked quickly, both of them glancing up at the sky every few minutes. Dark clouds gathered at the seam of the eastern horizon, still distant. Mayhem settled down in the long grass, watching them and panting.
They heard the rumble of thunder as the men finished their lines and went to help with the small remaining work. Ross almost snapped at Duke that she could finish it herself, but the approaching dark clouds made her swallow the words and her pride. Vivian and Luca finished her line, and Duke and Ross finished shortly afterward. Ross and Vivian each took two shovels and put them back in the shed, Mayhem trotting after them. Wind whipped around them as they locked the shed and turned back to the circle. Ross stopped and grabbed Vivian’s arm. “I think we should stay back here,” she said, watching Merrick drawing a dagger from its sheath at his waist.
“He’s not going to hurt us,” replied Vivian sensibly, pulling free of Ross’s grasp. “Besides, you don’t believe in the mumbo jumbo, right? I want to watch from a closer spot.”
Merrick had already started murmuring an incantation. Vivian walked over to Luca and Duke.
“What’s he doing now?” she asked Luca in a low voice.
Luca looked at the pale redheaded girl and smiled a little at her incessant curiosity. She was certainly a different creature than her reserved and practical roommate. “He is activating the rune and sealing it.”
Merrick drew the dagger across his left palm in a sharp motion. Vivian winced. “With blood,” she stated.
“Yes. If we were in our own world, there would be other ways, but blood is certain,” replied Luca.
She narrowed her eyes. “His blood isn’t red. It’s…it looks blue.”
“A difference in the Sidhe body. They are not made as mortals or Northmen,” replied Luca. He looked like he was about to say more, but then stopped. Vivian glanced at him but remarkably didn’t press him for more. Instead, she looked back to Merrick thoughtfully.